


The Leech-Collector Makes An Effort

by SecondStarfall (beantiger)



Series: The Second Starfall Stories [46]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Chronic Illness, F/F, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Fantasy, Flash Fic, Gen, Guilt, Happy Ending, LGBTQ Character, Lesbian Character, Loneliness, Medieval, Microfic, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Reunions, Sheep, Talking Animals, Trans Female Character, Werewolves, leeches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:39:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24733243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall
Summary: “I’m guessing this was a good week,” Jeunesse replied.“It’d be better with a wolf in it.”***A lonely werewolf reunites with an old companion...and her golden ram.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: The Second Starfall Stories [46]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975
Kudos: 4





	The Leech-Collector Makes An Effort

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to another _Second Starfall_ tale. Heed the tags and enjoy! 
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨

A leech-collector peddled her trade in the city of Auradou, where she slept along the shore of the Saintsborne during mild weather. As she was also a werewolf, wading in the water on both four legs and two, this roofless existence suited her. The moon said little. The midnight wind always seemed to sing a delicate hymn. She appreciated her solitary existence with the leeches and the night. Rarely did she allow herself to regret it.

And so it irritated her to awake one dark morning with a talking ram hovering over her. 

“No more,” said the leech-collector in her human skin. A headache brewed at the forefront of her skull. It had been a hard month, her forced shifts between forms particularly ragged, her dreams prying open old wounds. “She knows they don’t work. Not for what she has. Go home.”

“Lady Belrose,” greeted the ram. He was a king’s ram from the highlands, and from hoof to head stood larger than a pony. The sun peering over the horizon rimmed his golden wool in a painful orange. “She does know. This is not about the leeches. It never has been—I apologize, this is what she asked me to tell you.”

Strangely, the ram had come alone. He never came alone. The leech-collector—whose surname was indeed Belrose, but who preferred Jeunesse—sat up on the promenade with a growl. 

“It has been a...bad week, as she calls it. She sleeps so deeply. She could not accompany me...” The ram’s expression told Jeunesse that he'd distanced himself from his own heart. “But perhaps next week will be better.”

“Hannah can’t shepherd anymore,” Jeunesse said. “Her body quit. And she wants me to come help her. A werewolf and a shepherd, like the old days.”

“Yes, my lady.” 

“I tried my cures.”

“Many have. She does not hold that failure against you.”

They spoke of Hannah Lestrange, the shepherd of the golden flock—the king’s flock, as it was known, though the king who’d adopted it had long since gone to dust. If Jeunesse considered her for too long, a hazy, shameful weakness fell over her. It was a feeling that she could not transmute into something more durable, more stoic. She despised it.

“When we were finding homes for the cubs,” Jeunesse said, “she didn’t want help.”

“She does not want you alone, Lady Belrose. She says it isn’t natural, for—someone such as yourself.”

“It isn’t, but we’re long past that now,” Jeunesse concluded. Her guts had turned to water, it seemed. “Apologies.”

Wolf, ram, and shepherd had traveled together a decade ago, and their little quest had, for a few years, softened Jeunesse in a way she didn’t appreciate. The three had found homes for a dozen orphaned werewolf pups among the shepherds in the highlands. Those good-hearted folk had brightened to know that someone remembered the old pact—and wanted to honor it. It was all very cozy.

Guilt, suddenly, swarmed over her.

 _I’m done with this,_ she thought at present, _done with families and that horrid closeness._

A wolf is single-minded, and she suddenly, expertly, ignored the ram’s presence as daylight crawled over the Saintsborne. Jeunesse went about her work in silence: bathing, fishing up breakfast, plucking leeches from her legs for later delivery to the surgeons. 

Finally, blessedly, the golden ram disappeared down the promenade. He returned a fortnight later with three dozen golden sheep. It was mid-afternoon, and they delicately bobbed like fruit in the river as Jeunesse looked up from her writhing buckets.

A middle-aged woman gazed out over the shore from upon the ram's back. She smirked with a magnetic, if exhausted, charisma. 

“Never doubt the relentlessness of a shepherd,” said Hannah Lestrange. “Even one with a mysterious and incurable illness that may or may not be a curse or something else _terrible_ —”

“I’m guessing this was a good week,” Jeunesse replied. 

“It’d be better with a wolf in it.”

It was hard to argue with that. It was harder, still, to argue with the despair rising in Jeunesse's throat—but if Hannah could trek this far on her account, perhaps she could make an effort...

“Alright." Pursing her lips, Jeunesse tried not to smile. "Alright."

**Author's Note:**

> Please be sure to leave a comment or a kudos or bookmark the piece if you enjoyed it! ❤️
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:** I have decided to finally, finally, FINALLY, get to some of the characters that have been percolating around my brain for months. The idea for this story's been sitting on my list for-frigging-ever, especially the part about introducing somebody with chronic fatigue (spoonie rep what what).
> 
> Jeunesse is a translady, as I've said before, although we won't explore that until I sit down and write the whole thing about what she and Hannah did and why. It'll probably be novella-length. You may also recall Jeunesse has a daughter, Simone, and a deceased first partner named Sophie. That's all a part of it, too. Consider this a teaser for now!


End file.
